Busy schedules, bad weather, focused training, and other factors cause bicycle riders ranging from the novice to the professional to train indoors. Numerous indoor training options exist including exercise bicycles and trainers. An exercise bicycle looks similar to a bicycle but without wheels, and includes a seat, handlebars, pedals, crank arms, a drive sprocket and chain. An indoor trainer, in contrast, is a mechanism that allows the rider to mount her actual bicycle to the trainer, with or without the rear wheel, and then ride the bike indoors. The trainer provides the resistance and supports the bike but otherwise is a simpler mechanism than a complete exercise bicycle. Such trainers allow a user to train using her own bicycle, and are much smaller than full exercise bicycles, are often are less expensive than full exercise bicycles.
While very useful, conventional trainers nonetheless suffer from many drawbacks. For example, it is often difficult to level conventional trainers from side to side. Moreover, riding a slightly tilted bicycle is uncomfortable and can cause unintended damage to the bicycle. In another example, many riders prefer that their bicycle be level fore and aft so that it feels like the rider is training on a flat surface as opposed to an incline or decline. Most conventional trainers, however, cannot be vertically adjusted so the rider places boards, books, or the like under the trainer to elevate the entire trainer, or under the front wheels to elevate the front of the bicycle. Similarly, many trainers are designed for a bicycle with a certain wheel size, such as conventional 26 inch wheels, relatively newer but increasingly popular 29 inch mountain bike wheels, and even more recent 700 c wheel sizes. However, conventional trainers are meant for only one size bicycle tire and thus a rider would need to have a separate trainer or use boards or the like to elevate the entire trainer if, for example, the user wanted to use a 26 inch trainer with a 29 inch mountain bike.
While many trainers are portable based on the simple fact that they are relatively small. Such trainers are nonetheless heavy, can be awkward to load into car trunks, and can still occupy substantial space when not in use. Portability, however, is important as some folks may want to store their trainer when not in use and some folks may take their trainer to races and the like in order to warm-up before a race and cool-down afterward. Finally, fitness training using a power meter, particularly for bicyclists, is increasingly popular. Power meters measure and display the rider's power output (typically displayed in Watts) used for pedaling. Power meters of many different sorts have been adapted for use on bicycles, exercise bicycles and other fitness equipment. Many of these designs, however, are overly complicated, prone to error, and/or prone to failure, and also tend to be relatively expensive.
With these thoughts in mind among others, aspects of the trainer disclosed herein were conceived.